Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat My Second Pond: Structure

This is how I am building and placing structure in the pond built per "My Second Pond: Groundbreaking!" which is to be stocked with SMB/YP/RES according to "My Second Pond: Stocking Plan, Strategy, and Tactics"

The built-in dirt structure includes two sets of two-tier flats for SMB Beds, a submerged island, and a large area intended for easy seining. The dirt structure can be seen in photos linked to above and probably more clearly in photos to follow.

This weekend we built the spawning beds for SMB. (See SMB Spawning Bed Preparation in the archives for more details on how to do this). There are a total of 25 beds, which is probably beau coup overkill for a 1/2 acre pond, but that's how using up the space and native rock I had set aside worked out. Since the beds are in two different locations (North side and South side), at two depths in each location (nominally 3' and 5' deep), I figure the SMB will hopefully pick and choose what works best for them each year based on water temperature, depth, etc. and be able to be at least somewhat successful in spawning each year. There is a log structure near the middle of the beds on each side of the pond, and next weekend I hope to work on placing root balls in between some of the beds to provide more woody cover for the spawning SMB and their fry.

The beds still need their "mattresses" of gravel placed inside them (except for one which is filled with hand-made pea gravel, carefully smashed from larger rocks by my daughter), but I can schlep that down into the basin later, by hand if it's too wet for
the front-end loader. I am trying to get all the jobs which really require machinery done while things are pretty dry.

I also placed some concrete and ceramic tiles in the pond, next to a large 5' diameter tile with hedgeapple (aka osage orange or bois d'arc) posts wired in place inside it, which I call the "pencil caddy." The tile and the caddy are just offshore from the submerged island, which my wife and daughter arranged some structure of their own on this weekend when they weren't helping with the SMB beds. For some reason, the submerged plateau is now known as "skull island."

Here are the SMB beds on the North side


and the South side of the pond


Here is the tile pile and the pencil caddy


located near Skull Island